LUNAR Remastered Collection Review

LUNAR Remastered Collection contains both Lunar games: LUNAR: Silver Star Story Complete and LUNAR 2: Eternal Blue Complete. Silver Star tells the story of aspiring Dragonmaster, Alex, whom along his friends, embark on a perilous quest to stop the Magic Emperor from taking over the world. Whereas Eternal Blue, which is set 1000 years after the events of the first game and features Hiro and his friends as the protagonists. The group of heroes embark on a journey to find the Goddess Althena.

Both Lunar games are old school Japanese Role-Playing Games, JRPG, where players as a cast of unique characters go dungeon crawling, kill enemies, find consumable items, earn money to buy stronger gear and weapons and earn experience points (XP) after each battle. As you level up, a myriad of character attributes will increase such as defense, attack, etc… Each character has their own normal attacks, special or magic skills, item usage and defend; the usual actions of RPGs.

Battles are turn based and players can either play them themselves or let the game’s A.I. do it. More often than not, it is very competent and your party will win normal battles. However, boss fights require a bit more of a strategy and manual input. And considering it’s old school, you’ll need a bit of grinding before tackling bosses.

Unlike other RPGs of that same era, you can actually see enemies on the map allowing you to avoid battles, although the surroundings doesn’t always permit you to do so due to limited space to move around. Another throwback is that in circumstances where enemies can barely be avoided, you’ll end up at a boss battle in very poor shape; low HP, low MP, limited items making battles harder than they need to be considering if you don’t grind enough, bosses packs a mean punch.

The games still look great, even by today’s standards and the collection’s supposed remastered status. Both games are bright and highly colorful and as an RPG staple, each dungeon/area has their own theme. Each character is uniquely designed and colored. The game’s story is told typical conversations between characters and 90s anime cutscenes, mostly for character introduction. The soundtracks are quite enjoyable; but not as classic as other RPGs. Cutscene voiceover work has been re-done for this remaster and it’s quite well performed overall. Nostalgic fans might prefer the previous voiceovers.

Considering these games are straight from the 1990s, quirks and issues are expected considering the progress that has been made in gameplay since then. The first being the lack of auto-save/checkpoint. If you don’t save often and die, it’s either back to your last save point or back to the main menu. Another nuisance is the menu-ing and more importantly the Equipment management (in the first Lunar especially). It’s quite counter-intuitive, not user friendly and incredibly clunky.

Another issue is the item/menu management is counter intuitive. It’s hard to tell at times what your character’s current equipment is. Also trying to sell items isn’t really simplistic either; at times I’d sell what I thought was unused equipment, but it was what I was wearing. Also, due to the age of these games, if you stop playing for a while, there’s nothing to help or guide you to pick up where you left off and what you were supposed to do next.

Look, I get the nostalgia factor LUNAR Remastered Collection and that the core games come from a different time, but this collection will mostly appeal to those who played the originals. But to newcomers or first timers, it’s hard to recommend this faithful collection. While the overall gameplay is pretty solid, the lack of checkpoint/auto-save forces players to save often, the menu-ing is incredibly clunky and outdated. If you’re craving for some nostalgia, LUNAR Remastered Collection is a must buy. However, if you’ve never played this series before or looking to dive into the genre, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection would be the better option.